Putin Ally Sends Shrapnel to French Ambassador After Being Hit in Donetsk

A Russian politician who used to head his country's space agency has blamed France for a wound he suffered during a visit to the Moscow-occupied Donetsk oblast in Ukraine.

Ex-chief of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said he had sent a shell fragment fired from a French-made 155 mm Caesar Cannon to France's ambassador to Moscow, Pierre Lévy.

Rogozin said that the shell had lodged in his spine after the hotel he was staying in was shelled by Ukrainian forces on December 21, 2022.

Russian media reported that two people were killed and several more were injured in the attack which took place on Rogozin's 59th birthday.

Along with the metal remnants of a shell Rogozin sent was a sternly worded letter of complaint. "Please pass on the fragment cut from my spine by surgeons to (French president) Emmanuel Macron," it said, according to a post on Rogozin's Telegram channel.

The post is accompanied by pictures of the letter and the shell fragment and shares an article from Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, which published extracts of the missive.

"Also tell him that no one will escape responsibility for the war crimes of France, the United States, Great Britain, Germany and other NATO countries in the Donbass," Rogozin said. Russia has been accused by international agencies and governments of carrying out numerous war crimes since it invaded Ukraine.

France has been among the many NATO nations that have supplied Kyiv's forces with weapons. These include 18 Caesar cannons which are truck-mounted howitzers.

In October 2022, Macron said France would increase its military aid to Kyiv following Russian airstrikes on Ukraine's energy and civilian infrastructure.

However, Rogozin's letter lamented how despite his love of French history, language and culture, Paris had "betrayed the cause of the great (ex-President Charles) de Gaulle and became one of the most bloodthirsty states in Europe."

He also accused France of becoming a "puppet state" along the lines of the wartime Vichy government, "serving the basest instincts of the Nazis," in a reference to Moscow's state aims of the invasion to "denazify" Ukraine, which has been rejected internationally.

When asked for a response to Rogozin's letter, a spokesperson for the French foreign ministry told Newsweek, "we have no specific comments."

Rogozin was the co-founder of the far-right Rodina political party which merged with other parties to form A Just Russia in 2006. He was replaced as director general of Roscosmos in July 2022 by Yuri Borisov.

Since his departure from the role, he has reportedly declared himself the head of the "Tsar's Wolves" inspection group of volunteers and said he aimed to test and supply the advanced weapons technology needed by Russian troops in Ukraine.